kamikazes + fighter helmets = Fong's Pizza /  by jen geigley


So yeah, where else can you find Moo Shu Pork, Kung Pao Chicken, Polynesian or Crab Rangoon pizza. Um, yes. Fong's Pizza – what a rad little pizza joint. The whole place is just fun. Good food. Great place to stop if you're on the late-night bar hop downtown.

So yeah, the helmets.

What's with the helmets, you're asking?



If you order a round of kamikazes, you get to wear the super fantastic fighter helmets. This is my new favorite thing. Ever.

summer has come and passed... /  by jen geigley


I was just looking through all the different sets of pictures left on our camera card, and it's becoming quite clear that the summer days are coming to a close. I'm already missing sunny days spent with this motley crew.

Bo and his dude friends have taken their trip to the boundary waters and are back with many stories and pictures to share. (All of them are happy to be sleeping in their warm beds.)

And over the long weekend, I spent an hour or so with two friends who are about to get married.

Just goofing around and taking photos.

Now, I'm no photographer, but when friends need someone to take a few pics, I'm there.

They were so much fun.

And I think we definitely ended up with some pretty sweet shots of them just being themselves.

And finally, I decided to do a couple quick family portraits of the three of us. Which was inspired by Rachel's posts here and here. (Such a cool families; such cool photos.)

We all hopped on the Vespa + sidecar and I threw the camera on top of a cooler and switched on the timer. Not so perfect results, which is okay. We're kind of in the shadows and you can barely see Lo's head peeking through here but at least it helped me realize that we can (and should) do this more often. Sometimes you've gotta embrace the imperfection and go with it.

five years. /  by jen geigley


I met this boy almost ten years ago. On a blind date, over coffee. Four years later, he proposed at that same coffee shop where we had sat and talked for the very first time.

One year after that we got married, wearing Chucks and Vans.

(wedding pics by Joe Murphy)
This year, as we celebrate our fifth anniversary, I'm still feeling like a pretty lucky girl. I don't know how I found this guy, or how he found me. I don't know how I found true love, a guy who makes me smile every day, or laugh in the middle of a spat. He's the best dad in the universe and I am proud to start our little family on this foundation we've built. While we're not perfect, we're close. I think Howard Stern once said that you can't be 100% compatible, but you're good if you can shoot for 98%. We'll go with that.

off to the fair /  by jen geigley


Ahhhh, the Iowa State Fair. Some people love it, some people loathe it.

But with this little girl, what's not to love? We can't help but have a good time.

We lucked out with the most perfect 70-degree sunny day.

We took Lo to Little Hands on the Farm, where kids make their way through a farm along a path that includes a garden, grain bin, apple orchard, chicken coop, tractor shed, sheep barn and dairy barn.

After gathering items along the way, they get the chance to sell these items at the Farmers’ Market for a dollar to buy a treat.

Of course, the animals were a hit. Lo wanted to hang with the baby chicks all afternoon. And we got to meet a few horses and cows and pigs throughout the day.

The butter cow is always a thrilling sight to behold.

And you can't leave the fair without having a corn dog. I love fair treats.

The fair food indulgences are mostly my thing, Bo being the vegetarian and Lotus being, well, the picky two-year-old. (But forget the chocolate covered bacon. I only eat the normal stuff.)

Lo was really funny with the cotton candy. Totally freaked out by it. There was no way she was going to try it.

It was a fun-filled, busy day for sure.

But it was awesome to have a whole day of uninterrupted family time, just the three of us.

mama's fallen angel /  by jen geigley


Dare #146 is up! And it may be slightly incriminating. This week we're daring you to scrap something bad you did as a kid. Maybe something you've never fessed up to until now. Something you never told your parents. Go ahead and get it down on paper so that someday your kids can hold it against you. (Or so you can prove to them that you are human.)

By the way, am I the only one who cringes when they see photos of themselves from the 90s? Yikes. The photo above is high school me. And the other one is a photo I took a zillion years ago at a Metallica show.

Go peek at the other girls' secrets and confessions here. Then play along, link up your page or post it to The Dares Flickr group. We wanna know your secrets, too.

first sweater /  by jen geigley


Last November when I was learning how to knit, I made a goal to knit at least one real sweater before the year was up.

So I started knitting this little cotton cardigan for Lotus last month and here it is, all sweater-like. In one piece. With buttons and everything. (You can find the free pattern here or here.)

I bribed my little model with Krispy Kreme before the photo shoot.

And despite the sad look on this face, I promise that she really liked the sweater. And the modeling.

I just wish I had made it one size larger – sadly, I didn't double check the measurements very carefully and it probably won't fit for much longer. But I really don't mind. This was my practice sweater and I've already picked out a new pattern to knit the next one. I can't help it - I'm totally hooked on this hobby.

little books /  by jen geigley


So lately, it seems that everyone is talking about mini books. My pal Mandi has an amazing mini book tutorial on her blog (I can't get over the oh-so-cool photos of her process.) Jamaica makes made some of my all-time favorite little books ever. Elise has really been on a roll lately. And you must see this post by Christina Clouse where she lays down the master list of some of the best mini books ever made.

Because of Christina's post, I decided to upload all my mini book photos that I had on my hard drive to Flickr, where I could see them and organize them into little groups. I'm so funny about making little books. There are so many of them in my house. It seems that when I'm done making one, I just throw it on the shelf and wonder if its pages will ever see the light of day again. Sometimes I wonder why I keep making them.

But then I think about the content. The range of subjects I have documented. I made a pregnancy book, and a twenty-page book for Lotus containing detailed notes I took about her babyhood, every single month of her first year. There's a book called 'I have to confess' (a free class by Shimelle) that dishes a bunch of my secrets and embarrassing traits. 'Life' has some of the funniest every-day little stuff that I've ever written about. I have a few little books dedicated to music; one about growing up on mtv in the 80s/90s and another with obscure song lyrics called 'Words to Live By.'

But even if I wanted to stop making mini books, I don't think I could. The subjects you can cover never end. There's huge appeal in knowing that you can finish a book in one night. (Okay, it might be a late night.) It's the perfect way to document a trip, a year, a season, a list or random stories and facts that you want to keep forever. Even if they do end up on a shelf for x amount of time.

Someday, you'd have to hope that they will end up in the lap of that potential someone who may love paging through and reading all of the random things you wrote. I was that sentimental kid, sitting around boxes of old photos at my grandparents' house and wanting to take home the old Sears Roebuck catalog they kept in their closet. I looked at the backs of every single photo to read the notes and dates and learned to distinguish the difference between my mother's and grandmother's handwriting. I was fascinated by a tin box of things my dad had collected when he was serving in the Army as a medic in Korea when he was just 17-18 years old. Those things were my favorite treasures.

So really. When you laugh at yourself for spending an evening making scrapbook pages, consider that it may not be so pointless after all. You just may inspire some young future person to do the same, three or more generations away. (It's also possible that everything you make will be destroyed by a natural disaster, thrown out or put in a box and never seen again. But I think we're all aware of those risks and continue in good faith. Ha.)

Anyway, here are the WINNERS of the giveaway mix CDs from the last post...




YAY! Kristen W., Je, Sheri and Jamie – email me your mailing addys to jgeigley [at] gmail [dot] com and I'll get these sent off soon. Thanks for playing; this was so much fun.

every summer needs a soundtrack. /  by jen geigley


New Dare is up! And this week, we have a special guest – Morgan Novak! If you know Morgan, you know that she is the queen of playlists, the master of mixes. She's a pretty inspiring girl.

So this week, we dare you to make a mix/soundtrack/playlist and document it. Write down the songs, what they mean to you, where they've taken you, or whatever story you want to tell. Or just burn a CD and make a cool cover for it. Then share it with someone! I made the mix above for my friend Erin. I called it 'a girl's guide to summer' and it's full of all of my latest faves. (Like Metric, Wild Light, Tiny Masters of Today, Architecture of Helsinki, Manchester Orchestra, Passion Pit, Peter Bjorn and John...)

But I couldn't stop there. I tried, but I had two more playlists that I absolutely had to scrap. The mix above is called 'headbangers ball' and it's full of my most favorite metal, the heaviest of the heavy. I love this one.

I was really really excited to put all of these songs together. Like really. You have no idea how happy this makes me. Slipknot, Pantera, Tool, Rage ... and I just realized right now that I forgot Ministry. That's going to be a problem. I'm going to have to fix that.

And the last mix is called 'people watching.' That's the feeling these songs give me. Like you could be walking around downtown with your headphones on, doing an inner monologue about everyone who walks by. I like people watching. (This one has Rivers Cuomo, The Flaming Lips, Elliott Smith, the Kinks, Ben Folds...)

Fun, huh? I hope you'll play along! And definitely take a minute to go and check out what Morgan and the other Dare girls did. (More girls will be adding their pages throughout the day, so check back.) Also – leave a comment below if you're interested in a little giveaway! Just let me know which mix you think you'd like best: Soundtrack to Summer, Headbangers Ball or People Watching. I'll pick winners on Monday night. Also, a sincere thank you for all of the kind words on the last post. I love you, blog friends!